Cs. Leung et al., DNA IMAGE CYTOMETRY OF PROSTATIC-CARCINOMA - A COMPARISON OF NEEDLE CORE BIOPSY AND SUBSEQUENT PROSTATECTOMY SPECIMENS, Modern pathology, 7(2), 1994, pp. 195-199
DNA ploidy has recently been identified as an objective prognostic fac
tor in prostatic carcinoma. Although the diagnosis of prostatic carcin
oma is increasingly being made with the use of needle core biopsies, t
he optimal method for the cytometric analysis of these specimens has y
et to be determined. In addition, the degree to which the biopsy is re
presentative of the subsequent prostatectomy specimen with respect to
DNA heterogeneity has not been adequately addressed. In this study, im
age cytometric (ICM) DNA analysis was performed on tissue sections fro
m 12 prostatic needle core biopsies and the results were compared with
similar ICM analysis of the subsequent prostatectomy specimens. Multi
ple blocks (n = 48) of the prostatectomy specimens were utilized to pr
epare tissue sections and nuclear suspensions and each set of preparat
ions were analyzed by ICM in a parallel comparison study. There was co
ncordance of 0.80 in the classification of DNA diploid and aneuploid t
umors by ICM analysis of tissue sections and nuclear suspensions from
paraffin blocks. In all of the discordant cases, DNA aneuploid populat
ions were identified by ICM analysis of tissue sections only. This is
attributed to difficulties in obtaining a representative nuclear suspe
nsion from disaggregated paraffin-embedded prostatic tissue which ofte
n has a very desmoplastic stroma. ICM analysis of tissue sections seem
s to be an optimal method for DNA ploidy analysis of prostatic carcino
ma and is well suited to small volume biopsy material. Determination o
f DNA ploidy status in prostatic biopsies was predictive of the subseq
uent prostatectomy specimens with a concordance of 0.92.